Protestant & Catholic Rapsites I post on

About Me

"His Beatitude Patriarch IGNATIUS IV arrived in Newark, New Jersey on the evening of October 28th, 2008. He was greeted at the airport by His Eminence Metropolitan PHILIP, Bishop ANTOUN, Bishop THOMAS and area clergy. His Beatitude will stay at the Archdiocese Headquarters until Thursday October 30th when he will depart for Boston, MA, where he will preside over a celebration banquet for the University of Balamand"

"A new study of Orthodox Christians in America has found a larger-than-expected number of converts, mostly from Roman Catholic and evangelical Protestant backgrounds.The report, released by the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute in Berkeley, Calif., surveyed 1,000 members of Greek Orthodox or Orthodox Church in America congregations, which represent about 60% of America's estimated 1.2 million Orthodox Christians.

Although Orthodox churches were historically immigrant communities, the study found that nine out of 10 parishioners are now American-born. Thousands of members had converted to the faith as adults: 29% of Greek Orthodox are converts, as are 51% of the OCA.

"I would not have expected this many," said Alexei Krindatch, the Orthodox Institute's research director. "My sense was that in Greek Orthodox, it would be around 15%, and OCA maybe one-third."

The study also found unexpectedly high numbers of converts among clergy — 56% in the OCA, 14% in the Greek Orthodox church. In both cases, the higher OCA numbers reflect that group's use of English in its worship services, he added.

These findings could mean that Orthodox churches are growing in America, assuming there aren't equal or greater numbers of Orthodox Christians leaving for other faiths; researchers won't know until they conduct a 2010 membership census. The findings, however, indicate that other Christians are increasingly seeking a more traditional worship experience, Krindatch said.

"In the case of Roman Catholics, those are mainly people who are not quite happy with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council; they are looking for the Catholic Church as it used to be in the past," he said. "In the case of evangelical Christians, those are people who have very strong personal beliefs, they know the Bible very well, they are frequent churchgoers, and eventually they want to join an established church with deep, historical roots."

They didn't include the jurisdiction I'm in, which is AOA (Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America) if they did the percentage would of been higher. Plus the survey was done on the west coast, the numbers could of been different if they did a national survey. But it's interesting to know what's going on in the west coast.

I would like to give thanks to Dr. Emma Loosley for suggesting these books to me, they will come in handy as I finish up on my rejoinder with Morey's book. But since I can't read spanish I won't be able to check out one of the books. Eventually, I will be able to check out:

The plan is to start out with the signs and symbols of early christianity into the Icons of early christianity. I will also let people know about the Icons of Judaism in the synagogues as well. At least that's how I plan on making my case.

The only otherthing I have to cover in the rejoinder is the "Calvinist" Patriarch claim. Other Orthodox on the web have already posted stuff about that so I'm just gonna quote what they already said.

This is going to take longer than what I planned. Especially now, since I'm in the St. Stephen's Course in Orthodox Theology program. Which is seen here and here. So it's gonna be awhile, but I'm sure I can always use what I'm learning at Saint Stephen's with what I'm working on here.......so I will quote stuff from the books I have to read for the Saint Stephen's program as well. For anything that deals with the topic at hand will help. In my conclusion, I will talk about how Eastern Orthodoxy had many places(regions) of influence. Robert Morey tries to paint the picture that we came from Egypt, but that's purely false. The City of Alexandria was not the only Holy See of Orthodoxy.

He totally ignores (or just doesn't know) about the Holy See of Antioch, plus at that time, the East and West were in full communion, so you would have to include Rome in the picture as well when you talk about Ancient Orthodoxy.

For at first the Holy Sees were

1. Rome

2. Alexandria

3. Antioch

And Later two more Holy sees were added in Constantinople and Jerusalem:

1. Rome

2. Constantinople

3. Alexandria

4. Antioch

5. Jerusalem

Morey only focuses on Alexandria Egypt, but Antioch was important as well, for after all, we were first called Christians in the city of Antioch. And to ignore the influence of Antioch is to distort the whole picture. So I'm going to include the influence of Antioch in my rejoinder.

In reading "Signs and Mysteries" by Mike Aquilina & Lea Marie Ravotti, I came across a statement that said:

"The Early Christians kept, more or less, within these limits. Yet, even with these constraints, they found an abundance of images at hand. Their first resource was the Bible, with its rich history and metaphor. The biblical images had for generations been stereotyped in the iconography of the synagogues of the Jews. Though later Judaism came to reject most religious artwork, the synagogues of late antiquity were lavishly decorated." page 15 [1]

They didn't have any pictures of this claim, but I didn't doubt it because I once saw something on TV in where they found evidence of something similar. I also heard a Conservative Jewish Rabbi mention the samething about some synagogues that still have icons in them. But I never really saw any pictures of what he was talking about. I heard the conservative Jewish Rabbi say it on this podcast. Play Online (It's about 40 minutes long and it was said in passing, when asked a question about it)

The pictures shown on this blog came from this Website: I agree with the general drift/ethos of what was said, but I don't agree with every statement said on that site for the issue was a bit more complex than that. There were christians in the church that rejected it, and it took a while for the Church to take a stand on the issue, but I 100%ly agree that images in some form were always present. We can see this with the Fish, the cross, the Shepard and the lamb, along with a host of others......... With that said, here are the Jewish pics.

Judean Synagogue in Dura Europos. According to the website it dates back to about 235 A.D.

This is a close up picture of one of the icons dipicted above.

Now, what I would like to know is when did the Jews start to change their mind about iconography in their Synagogues? Well wait, I heard that even some synagogues today have icons. But I would still like to know when they changed their mind. .......in general.

"The present Bible Commentary Series is not so much in honorof John Chrysostom as it is to continue and promote his legacy as an interpreterof the biblical texts for preaching and teaching God’s congregation, in order toprod its members to proceed on the way they started when they accepted God’scalling. Chrysostom’s virtual uniqueness is that he did not subscribe to anyhermeneutic or methodology, since this would amount to introducing anextra-textual authority over the biblical texts. For him, scripture is its owninterpreter. Listening to the texts time and again allowed him to realize that“call” and “read (aloud)” are not interconnected realities; rather, they are onereality since they both are renditions of the same Hebrew verb qara’. Given thatwords read aloud are words of instruction for one “to do them,” the only validreaction would be to hear, listen, obey, and abide by these words. All theseconnotations are subsumed in the same Hebrew verb šama‘. On the other hand,these scriptural “words of life” are presented as readily understandableutterances of a father to his children (Isaiah 1:2-3). The recipients are neverasked to engage in an intellectual debate with their divine instructor, or evenamong themselves, to fathom what he is saying. The Apostle to the Gentilesfollowed in the footsteps of the Prophets to Israel by handing down to them theGospel, that is, the Law of God’s Spirit through his Christ (Romans 8:2;Galatians 6:2) as fatherly instruction (1 Corinthians 4:15). He in turn wrotereadily understandable letters to be read aloud. It is in these same footstepsthat Chrysostom followed, having learned from both the Prophets and Paul thatthe same “words of life” carry also the sentence of death at the hand of thescriptural God, Judge of all (Deuteronomy 28; Joshua 8:32-35; Psalm 82; Matthew3:4-12; Romans 2:12-16; 1 Corinthians 10:1-11; Revelation 20:11-15).Whiletheological debates and hermeneutical theories come and go after having fedtheir proponents and their fans with passing human glory, the Golden Mouth’sexpository homilies, through the centuries, fed and still feed myriads ofbelievers in so many traditions and countries. Virtually banned from dogmatictreatises, he survives in the hearts of “those who have ears to hear.” Hissuccess is due to his commitment to exegesis rather than to futile hermeneutics.The latter behaves as someone who dictates on a living organism what it issupposed to be, whereas exegesis submits to that organism and endeavors todecipher it through trial and error."

The main view of the Origin of Aids is the Hunter theory. As seen from this website:

"The most commonly accepted theory is that of the 'hunter'.In this scenario, SIVcpz was transferred to humans as a result of chimps beingkilled and eaten or their blood getting into cuts or wounds on the hunter.Normally the hunter's body would have fought off SIV, but on a few occasions itadapted itself within its new human host and become HIV-1. The fact that therewere several different early strains of HIV, each with a slightly differentgenetic make-up (the most common of which was HIV-1 group M), would support thistheory: every time it passed from a chimpanzee to a man, it would have developedin a slightly different way within his body, and thus produced a slightlydifferent strain.

An article published in The Lancet in 20043, alsoshows how retroviral transfer from primates to hunters is still occurring eventoday. In a sample of 1099 individuals in Cameroon , they discovered ten (1%)were infected with SFV (Simian Foamy Virus), an illness which, like SIV, waspreviously thought only to infect primates. All these infections were believedto have been acquired through the butchering and consumption of monkey and apemeat. Discoveries such as this have led to calls for an outright ban on bushmeathunting to prevent simian viruses being passed to humans."

I embraced this view until I started to think about the fact that the green monkey lived next to Central Africans for centuries, if not for thousands of years. Yet this outbreak was a 20nth century outbreak. Why was the green monkey only a problem now? But then again, if mad cow desease can spread that way, then why can't SIV/HIV? So I still feel that the hunter theory has some merit, so I can't give it up completely.

I found this website to be balanced, and helpful, although it tends to lean toward the hunter theory.

But what I found more interesting, was not the mainstream theory, but another view, this idea talks about the possible link of a Central African Polio vaccine to HIV(1). (HIV 1 is the form of HIV that caused the Worldwide outbreak. There is another form called HIV 2, which is not that common).

I don't want to be a pusher of "Conspiracy Theories", but I thought this documentary was interesting. Maybe the modern outbreak of HIV has a multiple source. Maybe through both monkey hunters, as well as the hunt for new Polio vaccines, along with Contaminated/unclean needles to help vaccinate Polio in 3rd World countries.

As seen from the website"What does it mean to be a Christian and to live in this world? To answer that question, Fr. Tom examines the ancient New Testament Church." and part 2 deals with "the Roman-Byzantine empire of the 4th century." Part 3 talks about "the fifth through fifteenth centuries." Part 4 examines "the four centuries of Muslim rule over Eastern Orthodox Christians." Part 5 discusses "how the Orthodox Church fared in Russia before the revolution." Part 6 "looks at the Church in the 20th century, especially in Communist countries." Part 7 outlines "how the Church fared in the 20th century in lands that were not traditionally Orthodox." And Part 8 concludes "his series by reflecting on what it means to be a Christian in America today."

Spiritual Springtime: Reflection on 40 Years:As seen from the webpage:"Fr. Tom spoke at the 40th Anniversary of the consecration of the chapel at the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City, PA on September 27, 2008. In this lecture he reflects on 40 years of Orthodoxy in North America."

Orthodox.tv has alot of videos about various Saints on their website. You can buy them at their Store, or you can view them online by subscribing to a monthly fee of either $2.99 which is the "plus subscription" (you won't be able to see all the videos with this), or for $4.99(every month) which is the premium subscription.....Which is what I have.

It's been months since I visited this website, but I enjoyed the videos they have about the Saints.

As seen from the website:"In this edition of the Illumined Heart, pioneering radio host of "Our Life In Christ" Steve Robinson talks with Kevin about the role, opportunity and challenges of lay (person) "ministry" within the Orthodox Church. Is the Orthodox Church so clerically oriented that there isn't room for lay ministry? Listen and find out in this frank interview!"

As seen from the website:"Hear the fascinating story of Patrick Lansdowne, a 7-year Hare Krishna Temple devotee, about his journey to Christ and the Orthodox Church. In Part One of the interview, Patrick and host Kevin Allen discuss the Hare Krishna sect's unique metaphysics and practices (within Hindusim) and how and why Patrick adopted them! Do any of them "prefigure" Christ?"

This is Ft. James Early's Journy. He should be coming out with a book soon.

As seen from the website:"Fr. James tells his story of how he found the Orthodox Church. Fr. James served as a missionary for the Baptist Church in Bosnia. In Bosnia he discovered the Orthodox Church. Fr. James is an Author of a forth coming book from Regina Orthodox Press entitled From Baptist to Bosnia to Byzantium. Fr. James serves as the second Priest at St. Joseph Antiochian Orthodox Church in Houston. Fr. James and his family were received into the Orthodox Church in 2001."